Three U.S. airlines—American, Delta and Frontier—were hit late last week with a total of $850,000 in fines for violating Federal customer protection rules covering bumping, refunds and baggage claims. The actions cover complaints starting from 2015.
Frontier, one of the ultra-low-cost carrier group, had the highest penalty, $400,000, for consistently bumping passengers without seeking volunteers, not providing timely compensation, and not providing disabled passengers with needed assistance in boarding and deplaning.
Delta agreed to pay $200,000 for under-reporting the number of mishandled baggage claims. The airline says it has updated its policies to comply, and pointed to its recent investments in technology to let customers track bags in real time.
American’s $250,000 in fines resulted from a large volume of complaints that the airline was slow to make refunds owed to customers. Rules require the airlines to make refunds to credit cards within 7 business days. American acknowledged the problem, but largely blamed it on problems from merging its computer systems with USAir the year before.
